Category Archives: Personal

Coming soon: Guest blog posts from my favourite Finn

This month and next month I will be publishing, on this blog, posts by my friend Satu, who will be attending three festival in Finland. She will be at Rock the Beach in Helsinki, Qstock in Oulu and at Nummirock, and has agreed to write about them. 

I thought a bit of variety might be interesting.

Got to get back to the day job now,

Bye,

Rose

I need an internet connection

I have three reviews, or at least the outline of three reviews, to put online. Unfortunately I currently I have no internet (I’m writing this from my phone) so it may be sometime before you see them. I need to add links and suchlike and that’s difficult when I use my phone. It’s frustrating but not the end of the world.

In other news I found out this morning that one if my favourite bands, Reckless Love, is doing a UK tour in October. I am going to have to see them this year, since I didn’t get to see them last year.

And finally, if anyone has any suggestions for books and music they think I should review drop me a line.

On my lust so far I have the new Science of Discworld IV and an ebook called Knot in Time to read. I would like to read The Long War and hear Black Sabbath’s album 13.

Coming soon, a spate of book reviews

I’ve just had a phone call from the library; they’ve got (finally!) the latest Science of Discworld. I’m going to collect it this afternoon. When I get back, and before I start reading it, I’m going to review a couple of e-books I downloaded yesterday.

The first ‘Georgiana Darcy’s Diary’ by Anna Elliott is a continuation of the Jane Austen classic ‘Pride and Prejudice’, and the second is a celebratory edition of the ‘For Dummies…’ series marking their 20th anniversary.

Bye for one,

Rose

I’ve got quite a few books to review

I found my way to a website called http://www.everythingbooksandauthors.com/ this morning, and on their ‘Special Offers & Freebies’ page there were a few books that I thought looked interesting. I’m going to read them all and review them.

I love having the Kindle for PC app. I have so many books on it, most of them free.

Bye

Rose

Black Sabbath: New album ’13’ released in two weeks…

…But in the meantime here’s a video or two about their time in the studio making it.

I will probably be getting the album at some point. Hopefully it’ll be on Spotify so that I can listen to it/review it even if I can’t afford the album for a while. I’m really looking forward to hearing it, especially after hearing ‘God is Dead?’

Loving Ozzy’s snazzy bowler hat btw, even though I’m more of a top hat girl myself.

Quietly dying of shock (and quite proud); A Thank You to my readers.

I just thought I’d show you all something.

Look at the screen shot below. This month I have had twice as many views as I had all last year. I’m in shock

Thank you all for taking the time to read my scribbles and thank you to those who comment, like and reblog. You’re doing wonders for my confidence. I appreciate it immensely and I’ll do my best to be worthy of your time and effort.

Download Festival 2013 (A victory for the socially awkward)

My First Festival

In just over two weeks I will be departing Lincolnshire in the company of my dear friend Lellibo for that great celebration of all things rock and metal, Download Festival 2013.

http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/news

I’m rather excited. I’ve never been to a music festival before. I’ve never been interested in that sort of thing. I was not a normal teenager or student; now I’m getting on a bit I am interested in music (if you hadn’t noticed). I have no idea what to take, although I have been trying to find out. The Download website is quite helpful and when I contacted the organisers with questions they were answered promptly. I also found a festival survival guide written by a veteran of Download, especially for people going to Download for the first time. There’s a link to it on the Download website.

http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/info

I’m going to meet up with an old friend I haven’t seen in a few years, and two new friends that I’ve yet to have a chance to meet up with. I hope to also meet new people. I don’t find it particularly easy to make new friends or even acquaintances, but I want to try. As well as a celebration of my 30th birthday this trip is also going to be a celebration of how far I’ve come this year. I still have trouble dealing with people (and occasionally leaving the house – people are scary) but I managed to go to London and meet a large group of strangers, and to go to a concert in Nottingham on my own, so this will help me prove to myself that I can do this stuff.

This morning I’ve been going through the line-up and stage times, trying to work out which bands I definitely want to see. There are quite a few. If I get my timing right I should be able to see most of them. Bands I have no intention of missing include HIM, Korn, Motorhead, Young Guns, 30 Seconds to Mars, Stone Sour and Sacred Mother Tongue. There are a few that I would like to see but I don’t mind if I miss a bit of their set getting between stages: Down, Papa Roach, 3 Doors Down, Turisas, Iron Maiden, QOTSA, Alice in Chains, Rammstein and Limp Bizkit. The rest of the time I’ll just catch whoever I like the sound of.

http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/line-up/all

I did a quick calculation and worked out that it might be expensive for the weekend (we’ve got 5 night camping tickets) but even if I only see those 16 bands, that’s £12.81 per band with free accommodation plus £20 towards petrol. You can’t get concert tickets, accommodation and train tickets for that; such good value for money! Now I just need to get some spending money together 😀

I’m planning to write about my experiences, and have purchased myself a notebook to write everything down in while I’m at the festival. I’m on the cadge for a camera to borrow so I can take some decent pictures. While I am getting one of the lockers and will be able to charge my phone, I want to save the battery for emergences, for example when I inevitably get lost, confused or forget my medication and need rescuing by my friends who I’m going to issue with spare inhalers for me.

So for the duration of Download I will be offline.

When I get home I plan to sleep, shower and start writing about it. Not necessarily in that order. It might take a couple of days for the band reviews to get published but they will be. In addition to band reviews I intend to write a general commentary on the festival as a whole, and a discussion of my reactions to it. I’m wandering how I will react to all the people, the constant stimulation and general atmosphere. I don’t generally do well in loud crowded places for more than a couple of hours at a time (it’s a wonder I survive concerts).

If anyone has any survival tips for the festival I’d appreciate the advice (or if any of my friends/relatives want to contribute to the 30th birthday spending fund – you know where I am).

Bye for now,

Rose

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Worlds Without End: Women of Genre Fiction Challenge – I’m going to give it a go

I quite like SciFi/Fantasy books, I’ve read a lot of them, so when I found out about ‘Worlds Without End’ I decided to go and have a look at their website:

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/

One of their ‘challenges’ is the Women of Genre Fiction challenge in which participants have to read and review twelve books from their list of women authors. The books have to be by women authors you’ve never read before. I’m going to give it a go. The first I am reading will reading is ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’ by Ann Radcliffe.

For more information on the challenge please go to:

https://www.worldswithoutend.com/authors_wogf.asp

Bye

Rose

Listening to the radio

I’m listening to BBC Radio 4 Extra; there’s a radio play on called ‘I want to go home’ by David Pownall. The play is about word meanings and sound changes, and is from the perspective of the words that make up the sentence.

The characters are anthropomorphisms of words, ‘I’ starting out as ‘Ich’, ‘want’ as ‘willa’, ‘Home’ and ‘Haim’ and ‘to go’ as ‘gan’, and the story of how they changed over time. It’s an interesting and entertaining programme, very educational as well.

It will probably be on iPlayer for a week if you want to listen, I would recommend it.

Bye,

Rose